For the most time, I've been firmly in the largest camp when it comes to the Mono debate - the 'I don't care'-camp. With patent lawsuits being hotter than Lady Gaga right now, that changed. For good reason, so it seems; while firmly in the 'ZOMG-MICROSOFT-IS-T3H-EVILL!1!!ONE!'-camp, The-Source.com investigated the five most popular Mono applications, and the conclusion is clear: all of them implement a lot of namespaces which are not covered by Microsoft's community promise thing.

You either end up starving, frustrated, and lonely, wondering why no one will compensate you for what you want to do, or you end up writing trite crap novels with titles like "A is for Alibi", if one's writing prose.

I suggest writing for the sake of writing, and then finding a way to make money, be it from said writing or other means.

That said, your bitter rant has little to do with the subject at hand.

'Bitter rant' - huh? I am not bitter and find programming in C# rather fun.

Comparing the risk of being sued for writing Free Software using the 'wrong C# namespaces' is so infinitesimally small compared with the other everyday risks of being a computer programmer is not a 'rant'. I am not bitter because I am happily employed. I like C# and have written language bindings for the Qt and KDE apis (Qyoto and Kimono) without anyone paying me and have certainly not been bothered about this imaginary risk stuff.